Optimal Control of a Supercapacitor Energy Storage System for Smoothing Wave Output Power

This paper addresses the fluctuation problem in wave generated power. A supercapacitor energy storage system is applied to smooth the power generated from a point absorber type wave energy converter. An optimal linear quadratic control algorithm with Integral action is designed to govern the charge and discharge operations of the energy storage. The performance of the proposed control scheme is tested under an irregular sea state and verified through MATLAB simulation. Simulation results show that the supercapacitor and its associated control strategy are able to deliver stable and smooth power to a connected load.